Title to the artefacts. On the matter of title to the objects, as expected, opinions differ between Ukraine and the Crimean Museums. Ukraine, on the one hand, bases its claim on a Decree of 2nd February 2000 designating the collections of the four Crimean museums as Ukrainian State property.29 More generally, Ukraine invokes Ukrainian laws vesting ownership of all archaeological finds in the 27 Verdict (n. 1) 4.24, 4.25. 28 Ibid. 4.27. 29 Decree on the Basis of Article 15 Paragraph 13 of the Law of Ukraine on Museum and Museum Affairs (29 June 1995). See Verdict (n. 1) 3.4. state, one of those being the 2004 Law of Ukraine on Protection of Archaeo- logical Heritage.30 Underlining this argument is the premise that the secession of Crimea is irrelevant to the legal status of Ukrainian-registered cultural objects. The Crimean Museums, on the other hand, argue that the matter of title is more complex and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC), not Ukraine, should be considered to be the owner of the majority of the loaned objects.31 The ARC has had autonomous status since the foundation of Ukraine as an independent nation in the early 1990s. Moreover, according to the 1996 version of the Ukrainian Constitution, ARC is entitled to autonomously administer its possessions and to keep and use its historical objects. Given that three of the four Crimean Museums were apparently founded by ARC independently, the Crimean Museums believe the ARC should be considered to have title to all the objects other than those from the Sevastopol museum, which was founded by Ukraine. Further, they maintain that Ukraine’s ‘bare ownership right’ over the objects is superseded by the superior rights of the Crimean Museums on the basis of their rights of ‘operational management’. Under the previous version of the Ukrainian law, at least until May 2014, the Crimean Museums enjoyed certain in rem rights known as ‘operational management rights’ over the objects in their care. Following the annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture transferred the operational management right over Crimean-based Ukrainian national patrimony to the National Historical Museum of Ukraine.32 The Crimean Museums contest the legality of this transfer.33 Not without significance – and as a reminder that ‘national patrimony’ is a relative concept – the Russian Federation adopted a law on 4th February 2015, which states that museum collections in Crimea are to be included in the national museum registry of the Russian Feder...
